Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One and Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Bertram is also the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

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Magic in the Sonora Desert

February 14, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I signed up for a hike here in Organ Pipe Cactus National Park. Or rather I should say I signed up for a shuttle ride to the trail head. As I was walking toward the meeting place with a backpack full of emergency supples and a gallon of water (at that time, I was the only one signed up for the shuttle, and I wanted to be prepared for a long solo hike in the heat), a guy on a bicycle stopped and asked if I were going on a hike. I explained about the shuttle, and he asked if there would be room for him. At my assent, he pedaled off, and a few minutes later met up at the rendezvous point. He was a nice fellow, a born again Christian who prayed for me whenever I faltered. The amazing thing to me, though, is that before he knew anything about me, he said it was his mission in life to help the fatherless widows. Well, that’s me, though why fatherless widows are mentioned in the bible as needing help, I haven’t a clue.

At 4.5 miles, we stopped to rest in a small patch of shade at a crossroads so I could catch my breath and change my socks because I felt a blister coming on. A fellow came down the side path and stopped to talk. For some reason the two guys got on the subject of motorcycles, and we all ended up walking back to the campground together. The new fellow, Roger, even volunteered to carry my pack, which he thought was laughably light.

Later that evening, Roger brought a bottle of Grand Marnier to my camp site, and we sat under the stars, talked, and sipped the liqueur. (Is it a liqueur? I’m lamentably ignorant about various spirits because I seldom drink, and I’d never tasted Grand Marnier before.) This morning, he stopped by on his way out of camp to say goodbye and he kindly allowed me to take a photo of him with my VW. After he left, I sat at the picnic table, too tired to break camp, and looked for an excuse to stay another night.

While I was sitting there, a woman stopped by and said she’d heard that a woman in a VW was traveling across the country, and she wanted to meet me.

We chatted about our adventures as women tent campers traveling alone (she’s been doing this for five years), then got down to the basics. “Where are you from?” “Denver.” “Me too! Where did you go to school?” And unbelievably, it turns out we went to the same high school several years apart.

She wanted to get together later to have a beer and visit some moren so I paid to stay another night.

Magic.

And oh. I even got a medal for having hiked at least five miles in the desert.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

I still read your blog every time there is an entry and I LOVE that you’re finally on your trip. It only makes me wish that I lived somewhere on or near your route as I would definitely welcome meeting you.

I’m sitting on a street car in Toronto, on my way to work now work. It’s heavy snow outside and we just came through a deep frozen weekend (-36°C with the windchill).

Your posts this weekend and particularly today’s, made and make me smile.

It does seem odd that I am steeped in sunshine while you’re steeped in snow. I doubt I will get anywhere near the border (and I can’t cross it since I have yet to get a passport) – I don’t want to deal with driving in slick conditions. But oh, I am so glad you are enjoying my posts. I do hope you are finding your way back to a renewal of life or at leasya smattering of peace.

Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One debunks many established beliefs about what grief is, explains how it affects those left behind, and shows how to adjust to a world that no longer contains the loved one. “It is exactly what folk need to read who are grieving.”(Leesa Heely Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator ).

Other books by Pat Bertram

Available online wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.

While sorting through her deceased husband’s effects, Amanda is shocked to discover a gun and the photo of an unknown girl who resembles their daughter. After dedicating her life to David and his vocation as a pastor, the evidence that her devout husband kept secrets devastates Amanda. But Amanda has secrets of her own. . .

When Pat’s adult dance classmates discover she is a published author, the women suggest she write a mystery featuring the studio and its aging students. One sweet older lady laughingly volunteers to be the victim, and the others offer suggestions to jazz up the story. Pat starts writing, and then . . . the murders begin.

Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?